Happy Friday The 13th!

I don’t get home from work until midnight on Saturday nights and my wife usually goes to bed before I get home. I try to be quiet when I come in but as one might expect of a mother of 9 children, she’s a very light sleeper. Often when she awakes, she’s not really coherent. She’ll almost always ask me “who is that?” Since we go through this routine mostly every week, I’m of the mindset that she should know who would be coming into her room on Saturday night at midnight. I don’t know why she wants to wake herself up to have a conversation with me so I'd try to give a concise answer, “me” so that she can go back to sleep. But that's never enough, she then wants to probe further, as if asking incoherent questions will lead me to believe that she’s perfectly aware of what is going on around her.

So, one such night a few years ago when asked, “who is that?” I came up with a random answer that I was sure would boggle her mind. “It’s me, Uncle Steve”. Now, she doesn’t have an Uncle Steve and she doesn’t really know my Uncle Steve very well, so it was fun to listen to her struggle with the computation of this response. Of course she got annoyed, the very response I was looking for and so “Uncle Steve” is now my automatic "without a thought" answer to her when she’s talking in her sleep.

This past Saturday was funny though, my son is home from college for Spring break and he is one of these night owl people that stays up all night and sleeps in the day. So upon my arrival home, he and I exchanged some words downstairs in the entry way and she could obviously hear our voices in her dreams. Realizing that she may be upset our voices awakened her, I decided not to mess with her for our routine exchange and replied to the "Who is that?" question simply, “Me”. Then she asked, “who’s with you?”, I couldn’t resist, “Uncle Steve”. Her next few responses were fun and worth blogging about:

Cat:“What are you wearing, are you dressed like a wolf?”
Me: “Yes Bella, I’m a werewolf!”
Cat: Mumbling unintelligible voice as I retreat to the bathroom...

And then upon my return to the room, hoping she'd be back asleep...
Cat: “Come on, I’m serious”
Me: “What are you talking about?”
Cat: “Do you have a tail?”
Me: “Yes, all wolves have tails, good night!”
Cat: in frustration, “Whatever”

She did remember the conversation somewhat the next morning as we ate Sunday breakfast, I had the kids in tears (and her too) as I recounted the dialog. I said, “this is good stuff, I’m putting this on my blog!” Since I don’t like to post without a picture, I googled “wolfboy” and this is what I came up with. An interesting story of a very unique special little boy. Why does God do this??? Maybe for the very purpose of getting us to ponder that very question!

I realized that it was Friday the 13th only after I had put all of this together, and it dawned on me, the perfect title for this post!

Cursed Viruses, They're Of The Devil!

So yes, I’m a little more vulnerable than most because I have 11 computers connected to the Internet from my home, 7 of which are being used by non-technical children/wife. I’m pretty tenacious and usually try for hours to hack into the registry and rid the virus manually myself. This is dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing (and it’s dangerous even if you do). It’s somewhat easy to mess things up with your system if you’re not careful in the registry, which will require a reformat and complete reinstall. OK, I admit it, the dark side wins, they successfully have driven me to madness!

Usually, the most effective thing to do is to just reformat the hard drive and reinstall everything. This takes a great deal of time but at least once you’ve been through the exercise a few times you get pretty efficient at it. I have two hard drives on all of my PCs, the 2^nd drive should be used for data that you don’t want to lose. That should never really get infected. The primary drive is for the operating system and all of the applications. That way I can reformat (losing everything) at will.

Then you start thinking about the value of utilities like “Drive Image”, “ True Image” or “Ghost”. The beauty of these tools is that you can create an image of your computer after all of your software is installed. Just try to limit using the Internet to updating your Windows, Antivirus maintenance, and things that you know are legit until you get a good copy of the image. I get all of the most current and proven drivers loaded, my windows maintenance, MQ Office, Paintshop Pro and other tools that I use as a standard took kit (winzip or winRAR, codecs, VLC, Mozilla, Macromedia Flash and shockwave players, etc.) Just get the thing loaded up as much as you can but avoiding stuff that you’re unsure of. Then take your image and next time you get a virus, you can just reformat your drive and then restore the image and you’ll be way ahead of the game.

It’s risky to keep taking image snapshots because you most likely will not know when exactly you picked up the virus. So I just try to get a standard image and keep it around for when I need to rebuild the machine. Gwen’s PC was the latest victim, infected with a nasty Trojan Horse called av360 (Antivirus 360). What it does is act like a free legitimate antivirus program and detects like 30-50 fake viruses on your PC and then tries to get you to buy a utility that will go and clean up the hoax viruses. The fact is, av360 is the virus, and it goes undetected right on by Norton and McAfee (way to go Norton and McAfee).

I found out that if you don’t have Norton Antivirus on your PC and then try to install it after the PC is infected with av360, it will cause Norton to not be able to download updates. At this point you’re toast, the only way to get rid of it is to reformat. I also just found out, because this time I did have Norton installed already, that even with the latest updates, Norton doesn’t detect this thing.

There are dozens of write-ups and alleged free utilities for removing this virus if you google av360. I avoided the free utilities because I can’t be sure that they are legit. I did go in and hack the registry and searched the files out and removed them. I’m certain that the offending program that brought the Trojan in in the first place is still out there dormant on her PC, so I may still have a problem in the future. But at least for now the phony virus pop-up that was coming up every time Gwen did anything on the Internet, is now gone. As it was in this case, not having to reformat means I am victorious (this go around)!

I have some PC issue to deal with at home usually every 1-2 weeks, it’s always something fun…

Snopes - The Truth Will Set You Free!

I got a few emails recently, this was one of them:

Check out what some of our boys overseas did to their helicopter.
This very special Mi-24 helicopter is presently flying in Afghanistan ,
where it is no doubt causing quite a stir. God Bless the U.S.A.

Snopes says "Real Photos, Inaccurate Description"

Origins: Common as it may be to assume that any neat-o piece of military hardware must be American (especially when it's painted to look like the same type of bird that serves as the U.S. national symbol), the helicopter shown here is not American, nor has it been used by U.S. forces in Afghanistan or Iraq.

The type of helicopter shown in these images is the Mi-24 Hind; the unusually-decorated version pictured here originated with the Hungarian Air Force and was evidently painted with the eagle design by one of its crew members. The craft was not intended to be used in military operations and carried no armaments; it is strictly a display vehicle exhibited at air shows and the like.



Before propagating this type of urban legend and propaganda further, I recommend at least trying a quick Snopes search first.

Best Quote Of 2008

Snopes says, "TRUE"


POLK COUNTY FLORIDA SHERIFF GRADY JUDD

Some 'dirtbag' in Polk County Florida who got pulled over in a routine
traffic stop ended up 'executing' the deputy who stopped him. The deputy
was shot eight times, including once behind his right ear at close range.
Another deputy was wounded and a police dog killed. A state wide manhunt
ensued.

The low-life was found hiding in a wooded area with his gun. SWAT team
officers open fired and hit the guy 68 times.

Naturally, the media went nuts and asked why they shot him 68 times...
Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, told the Orlando Sentinel: "Because that's
all the ammunition we had or we would have shot him more!!!"

For the full story go to the snopes link.

Livin' On The Edge

Snopes says "TRUE"



Look at the first picture above. This guy went left to center. You can see where he broke through the guard rail on the right side of the picture where the people are standing on the road. His truck left the road, traveling from right to left, he flipped this truck end-over-end, went across the culvert outlet and landed on the side of the road where you see it now.



Origins: The above-displayed photographs depict a December 2006 accident in which the driver of a 1991 GMS pickup slid off the road onto the right shoulder, overcorrected when he turned back to the left, and crossed over the opposite lane of the highway before crashing through a cement barrier, skirting a railing above the drainage culvert, and coming to rest facing opposite his direction of travel - barely missing a plunge over a 200-foot precipice by about twelve inches.


The roadway in these pictures is verified to be Highway 59 (i.e. State Route 59) near Hurricane City, Utah.

The Hurricane City Police department also confirmed that these images "are consistent with a single vehicle traffic accident that occurred on State Route 59 in Hurricane City" on 30 December 006, and that "Hurricane City Fire Rescue responded to the scene". The driver told police he was traveling at 55 mph when he left the road, but the police report of the incident notes that the truck left a 92-foot-long skid mark, indicating a much higher speed (perhaps 75 to 80 mph).



My guess, the high speed probably caused the momentum for him to get across that culvert successfully. Horse Power Saves! And that's why I'm a huge fan of the BMW M3...

If this guy didn't believe in God before, I'd bet money that he does now!